1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to data collection devices and, more specifically, to an electronic device for collecting polling data from a ballot card wherein the device reads the ballot card, tallies the ballot data, and stores the tallied data in a central processor for later retrieval and uploading to a host computer or central facility.
2. Description of the Related Art
The collection and tallying of votes during an election can be a monumental task. In particular, the election of government officials, whether municipal, state, or federal, requires collection and processing of votes from large sectors of the public, encompassing possibly millions of voters. Because of public pressure to receive the earliest possible outcome of an election, the collected votes must be tallied in a very short period of time. And, in many countries, the employed ballot collecting and vote tallying systems are vulnerable to fraud.
The related art includes devices for electronically counting and delivering the results of votes cast on ballot cards at polling places during an election. These devices collect the ballot cards in sealed ballot boxes, and then the sealed ballot boxes are transported to a central station where the votes are tallied either by hand counting or by electronic means. Other devices in the art provide for computer memory means to store the collected ballot data in memory, as well as on the submitted ballot cards which are deposited in a standard ballot box connected to the device. In this instance, the device and ballot box are transported to the central station for tallying the votes. An example of such a device is disclosed in the Webb U.S. Pat. No. 4,774,665. Because the ballot collection device is external of the device, the possibility of tampering with ballots still exists. For instance, ballot cards can be removed from the ballot collection box while in transit to the central station. Thereafter, if a recount of the votes is necessary and the data is lost or removed from the device's memory, the ballot cards in the collection box will need to be re-scanned. Due to the possibility of tampering, the recount may not provide the true and correct results of an election.
In spite of the various electronic ballot collecting devices known in the prior art, there still exists a need for a data collection device which is structured to receive, store and tally ballot data from all submitted ballot cards at a remote site and to store the submitted ballot cards within a collection box locked within the device so that the risk of fraud or tampering is substantially reduced.